The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.

The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be.

[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.

The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders.

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.

The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.